Dragon Age: Origins Witch Hunt Review

The mystery of Morrigan is compounded by more mystery.

Those hoping for some sort of satisfying closure on the Morrigan storyline in Dragon Age: Origins unfortunately won't find it here. If you know what that sentence means and find it to be disappointing, then you're the target audience for this downloadable content. If you have no idea who Morrigan is and why you should care about her exploits, then bail out now. This content is meant for those who have either finished Origins or were too lazy to get through the whole thing and are beyond the point of caring about spoilers.

Called Witch Hunt, this is the latest in a long line of small storyline expansions. Morrigan, the sultry magic user from Origins, is the star here, though she only shows up very briefly at the end. The interaction is frustratingly shallow as well, which is too bad for fans of the fiction hoping for a little more detail. The conversation options with Morrigan will change depending on what you've done previously, assuming you import your character from Origins. If you lost your save files or just want to battle through with a new class, you can create a new one and assign specialization and points to statistics and skills as you see fit.

These screens are from the PC version.

The story begins at Flemeth's hut about a year after the events of Origins, where you start your search for Morrigan alongside Dog, an especially noisy mabari hound. It's not long before the entirety of your four-person party is filled out as you pick up a Dalish elf named Ariane and a goofy, sheltered mage named Finn who's eager for adventure. It turns out everyone's looking for the same thing – Morrigan and the relics she's accumulated – so it's up to you to retrace her steps and track her down.

Combat and conversation should be familiar to any Dragon Age player at this point, and through the various short dungeons visited you'll find a few mechanics at work to keep the conflict from becoming stale. In the basement of the Circle Tower, for example, you fight guardians that won't die permanently unless you disperse rips in the Veil that periodically appear on the battlefield. Later on you'll use a magical light-tracking system to uncover hidden Elven relics, and at one point have to run around the Circle Tower's library tracking down the appropriate books by using index cards. Ok so that last part really wasn't very exciting, but in general the combat works well, mostly because it's the same as you're used to. A boss battle has been included in final part of Witch Hunt, this time against a creature that resembles a cross between a bat, a spider, and a tree branch. It's called a Strider, it's fearsome, and you'll be seeing more of it in the sequel so it's cool to get a bit of a preview here. There are also dragons, which is appropriate.

Throughout the characterization is quite strong, as Ariane and Finn wind up talking to each other and your dog quite a bit. It injects humor into the adventure as Ariane makes fun of Finn's name, or when Finn comments on why the dog decided to relieve itself on an object of interest in the Circle Tower's basement. Expect a number of interactive conversations where you can select things to say, which helps make the tale seem more significant. There's enough to kill in here to level up at least once, and you can also buy, sell and enchant at a vendor, in this case Sandal, who fans may be more annoyed than glad to see return.

Considering Dragon Age 2 is following along with a different main character, it's difficult to say what how what happens in Witch Hunt connects with anything else in the future. As you'll see at the ending, there's a choice that needs to be made that potentially has serious consequences, though something tells me it'll all be smoothed over should you ever encounter Morrigan again.

The Verdict

If you're willing to spend money to see Morrigan again for about five minutes and get an unsatisfactory explanation of what's been going on, then you should buy Witch Hunt. If not, then it's tough to really recommend this downloadable content. The tale of how you find Dragon Age's sparsely clothed mage is a decent one filled with personality and humor, and the combat encounters, as brief as they are, can be fun, but Witch Hunt ultimately doesn't provide enough substance to satisfy.